Bitcoin Forum

Dear forum mods,

The trust system, designed to help each person build out a network of trust (similar, I think, in some sense, to a PGP web of trust) has got a fatal flaw.  I'd like to propose some solutions.

The flaw is in the conjunction of the default trust list AND giant red keep-away warnings that appear if someone has received negative feedback from someone on your trust list.  New accounts inherit a default web-of-trust and only a small percentage of them ever learn what this means.  The trust ratings of people on the default-trust (depth <=2) are therefore given an inordinate amount of power.  I've seen situation after situation in which there is no scam, there is nothing illegal, there is no real wrongdoing except that two people decided not to get along and because one of them is in this enshrined class of people (default-trust depth <= 2) the other one walks away with a red "KEEP AWAY" tag tattooed on their account.  When debate begins on meta (as it inevitably does), the person who got tagged cries "ABUSE" and the person who did the tagging says "trust is unmoderated, of course i'm allowed to untrust you if I wish".  And certainly if default-trust <= 2 weren't such a powerful class, this would be all there was to the story.

So, to summarize:

1) people on default-trust <=2 aren't able to use their trust in a normal way
  a) everyone who doesn't dig into the "meta" of this forum reads their ratings as ground truth
  b) they have to defend the righteousnes of what should be simply their opinion
2) people who have a negative experience with someone on a default trust list have no real recourse
  a) mutual negative trust is asymmetric (one person ends up with a GIANT RED WARNING, the other with a gripe buried somewhere in the "untrusted feedback section)
  b) other option is to simply plead and beg, which sometimes works sometimes doesn't
3) some people on default trust even make a hobby of marking red on people who haven't ever traded with them but with whom they simply disagree (see, for example, Vod vs MSCorp Key Sellers; or Quickseller vs. people who refuse to do business with him (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1023038.0, inter alia))

Several fixes seem to jump out, none would be difficult to implement, some of these suggestions are not mutually exclusive:

1) Remove the "default trust" list altogether.  Or set it up as an "opt in" rather than an "opt out". This would restore the trust system to what it probably is intended to do, allow people to build their own trust networks based on experience.
2) Trim default trust significantly:
  a) set to depth<=1 or
  b) set level 1 default trust to only 1 or two people
3) Replace large red "Warning trade with extreme caution!" warning with softer, yellow "This person has received negative feedback from someone in your trust list."  Even just this latter fix would help calm the hype, imo.

Ok, that's the end of my story.  I've just seen far too many unsubstantial gripes between forum members, one of which is on default trust, and the other not, and it leads to pages and pages of unecessary pleading/begging/apologizing/accusing etc when all that really needed to happen was the two people just decide not to trade together.  And I think these changes would help mitigate this issue.

I think they have trimmed down the list a lot since CITM was removed. The trust system is working pretty good now with disputes in meta. I know that I always carefully decide when handing out a negative since it does carry some extra weight. There really is no perfect solution to this no matter how it is done, but the current list is pretty good.

Trust isnt moderate and everyone has the ability to give negative trust to someone based on his judgement, but only those of default trust will be visible to the other
In this case, vod and quickseller got their own point of view regarding the matter and also the red trust is merely a guide for people to do some extra caution while dealing with user with red trust



You can already do this with the current system, you can exclude vod or quickseller as well if you wish



This is unnecesary if you build your own trust list

But I will propose to make a specific colour for neutral trust, because a neutral trust from default trust list member isnt visible unless you click on the trust score to check. This could be one of the reason why people like to put on negative trust rather than neutral trust even if the issue is already solved

This is exactly the echo that we hear each time from those on default trust who are having their ratings disputed "I have the right to a rate as I please".  
  However, as I point out in the OP, and as blazedout (above) acknowleges, there is a division between those whos ratings are just for themselves (most of us) and the gods whos ratings are for everyone (the default-trust <=2 group).


Yes, I acknowledge this in my OP.  It seems you didn't catch some of the subtlety?  I'm not asking how the trust system works.  I won't rehash my OP, just please look more carefully.





You may be right that things are better than before, but I still read a lot of drama in Meta which seems completely like bluster from two parties with an assymetrical power relation.  Ie, no one was scammed, no one was harmed except the reputation of one of the parties.

What about the solutions I propose?  You say there's no perfect solution but you didn't address how my solutions wouldn't work or be an improvement.

1) Well I think that by default the list should be enabled for new users who join here. As a brand new user you have no idea who to trust and will most likely get scammed by someone not on the default list compared to those who are on it, or trusted by someone on it. After you have been here for a while then remove the default and create your own if you want.

2) This was done already after CITM and depth 2 seems alright to me

3) I really do not have an opinion on the color so red or yellow whatever.

I do agree that the trust system is confusing for a lot of people...we need a clickable link under trust settings explaining it better.

I was going to make a similar post few days back but I dropped the idea thinking of what the REPUTED members would argue.

I agree that these DEFAULT TRUST MEMBERS have been able to stop scams with the help of their power to be in the depth 2 but what about the ratings they give only based on an assumption? Would they compensate for the loss the user has to bear as he/she has received a negative trust rating for no reason? Others would just go by their trust or some may give an argument that since you are blaming a default trust member, you are a scammer. They have basically stopped the legit users from selling their products or exchanging in this forum because of their trust rating which was just an assumption.


When I was a newbie, I did not even know about untrusted feedback and for me, I just went by the trust I could see given by the default trust member. Now one person scammed me on this forum and I gave him a negative trust but well, since I ain't in the default trust, nobody will even see my trust rating. Does that mean that my rating isn't valued or I was never scammed because my trust isn't visible or valid?


So many times I see ratings like "This user is most likely a scammer" and feel like laughing. What does it mean by MOST LIKELY? Is the person who is giving such a trust rating an astrologer who can predict the future? Many times their rating might be right but I don't like the ASSUMPTION part which is given in our trust system that "You strongly believe the user is a scammer." Either a person is a scammer or he isn't. I can't just get the feeling of a scam when I haven't been scammed or haven't seen anyone getting scammed. It's just like I see a person in real life and assume he is a cheat and then tell others I doubt him that he might rob you.


Also, I have noticed that they also ask for feedback and give feedback in exchange. May be they haven't forced any user but yeah, they have asked for it. So if that person has added them in their default trust list and the user in turn gets added in the default trust list by a default trust list member, these members automatically get added in that default trust list. I hence don't trust these REPUTED members.


All users should be treated equally and there is no excuse that the trust system isn't moderated and then giving the reputed members an upper hand. Now it is as if they call a person a scammer or trusted, their rating is counted. I would chose to either Remove the Default Trust Members or Moderate the Trust System.


I don't know if I'm right or not but is it true that the users who give Loans and/or work as escrow are mainly in the default trust list?

This issue has been raised up many times. At least you've proposed a few possible fixes; usually there are none.
The third option seems nice, but rather than changing both options should be available. Although I'm not sure how the system is going to judge that. Maybe after a few negative ratings it becomes red?
The system can get very confusing, especially if you add some people manually. Just today I saw myself @Depth 2 LaudaM, it did surprise me.

The #1 problem with this forum is THERE ARE NO OFFICIAL RULES OR GUIDELINES POSTED ANYWHERE ON IT!!!!!!!!

When I was on the default trust, no one even told me I was added. No rules were explained to me, and none were posted anywhere to be read on my own initiative. This left me to look to what other users do to extrapolate the acceptable standards of acceptable use for the default trust list. Looking at how people such as Vod use their trust ratings, one could easily get the impression his behavior is acceptable, as nothing is ever done when certain users use the trust to air their grievances, therefore it appears to be acceptable use of the system.

I used my position on the default trust ONCE to point out a user harassing me in my sales threads and I was removed within a week. The disparity in enforcement is glaring.  The rules are kept unwritten, unspoken, and ambiguous so that those in control don't have any rules for themselves, they can simply pick and choose who they want to selectively enforce against. If you are one of their bros, well then hey, abuse away, no one will do shit about it.

The complete lack of rules, directions, and guidelines for the trust system is the LEADING FACTOR causing all of these disputes, complaints, and abuses. Why would Theymos post rules though when he already can do whatever he wants. If he made rules, then people might expect HIM to follow them too.

I think that erikalui is really doing a good job emphasizing the asymmetry of trust ratings in the current system.  Default trusters (for the most part) are putting out ratings for everyone.  Everyone else's ratings are for your own consumption only.  Erikalui   says that the trust system should be moderated.  I don't know if I agree about that.  I think the reason that it's unmoderated is that in principle, everyone is supposed to manage their own trust list.  However, in principle, this is not the case, and that's why I think that default trust should be removed or significantly trimmed down.

Blazedout says that without enabling default trust for new members, people will be scammed.  I have to admit, my main reply to this is along the lines of "isn't this the internet?"  Ie, it's the wild west and buyer beware obviously.  Right?  If someone is going to give their money away without looking into the situation then don't they simply deserve to learn that lesson the hard way so that they won't do it again?

LaudaM appreciates the suggestion to change the color and the warning text.  I think this would be valuable because it would more accurately reflect the situation of having been dinged by a default-truster.  If you got dinged by vod for selling microsoft products, certainly "Warning: trade with extreme caution" is an overblown characterization of the event.  IMO, "This user has received negative feedback from someone in your trust list" would more appropriately characterize (a) the fact that it was a negative feedback from someone, nothing more/nothing less and (b) that it is in your own power to decide who is in your trust list and fix that as you see fit.

I think it is pretty clear this is a bad idea.

The trust system is designed to be a way to determine the appropriateness it is to trust someone else with your money/property. By limiting the default depth to 1, you put the burden of this determination focused into a very small group of people. Additionally, since the majority of trust ratings are in reference to a completed trade, very few people would be affirmatively show as being trustworthy enough to send funds first to. 

As mentioned by blazedout419, the default trust system is most import to be enabled by default for new users. It allows new users to conduct due diligence on their potential trading partners.

Granted, maybe users should be "forced" to create their own trust list after a certain amount of time, however many people choose to not use a custom list because well, they agree for the most part that people in default trust should have their ratings counted. If people were forced to create a custom trust list, say once they become a full member, then I would say that most people would make one that mirrors that of default trust, however they would likely not keep it updated for when people scam, start to send crazy trust reports, ect. which would probably not be a good thing. Additionally the people who do currently use custom trust lists generally add people who are in the default trust network, which should say something about how well the default trust system is working.

If you have enough negative trust from people in your trust network so that they show up as having a "trade with caution" tag, then you should well trade with caution because enough people whose opinions you trust enough for you to view them by default thinks they are a scammer. By making the warning toned down as you request means that more people are going to get scammed after they have received warnings that a scam attempt is highly likely by the person in question.

I consider this request to be an attempt to make it easier for people to scam in the future and as a result I consider you to likely be someone who will try to scam in the future. 

I was almost tempted to reply to your thoughts here, but given the fact that you're currently on a troll tspacepilot kick (see his last posts, everyone), I think I'm just gonna leave this as is.  But hey, ACCTSeller, sounds like you ought to give me negative trust for this, right?  What's holding you back?

I did give you negative trust for this, right after I wrote that post.

If you are unable/unwilling to counter my arguments then I think you should admit they are valid and admit the suggestions in the OP are nothing more then to make it easier for people to scam.

P.S. I thought I was on your ignore list ::)

Oh great!  I gave you one back.  So in some sense, this is how the trust system should work: you are an alt of quickseller who want to troll me mercilessly without making quickseller account look bad and I wouldn't want to do business with an asshole who has nothing better to do than troll me on a bitcoin forum.  So, we neg-rep each other and that's that.  People who put me on their trust network will get my negative feedback for you and vice versa.

This is clearly an ideal usage of the trust system.  If you were ballsy enough to pull this move as quickseller then this situation would be exemplifying the problems with the default trust system which I highlight in my OP: people on default-trust can decide to neg-rep asymmetically those who aren't on it based on any whim they choose.

Have a nice-life *seller, I hope you get a new hobby (from trolling me) soon.  It's kinda annoying.

It's not that I simply "disagree" with what they are doing; it's that what they are doing is illegal AND immoral.  They don't care about society or it's values.

Theft is theft - it does not matter if it boosts the bitcoin economy.   :-\

IMHO

1) New users or even old users may not know who to trust and may not moderate their trust list. It shouldn't be mandatory.

2) It will make trust list worse. Obviously, a few people can't look after many, so more people will be added to level 1 which gives them more power.

3) Current text is sometimes does not fit in all cases but in major cases, it does. If you or anyone can suggest a better text, theymos might consider it.

---

Trust feedback can be left even if they didn't trade. Doing a business with them to leave a feedback is worst idea IMHO.

You should read more about your "versus claims".


It's not "pure" assumption. It is based on activity of the likely-scammer + assumption. These has saved many people.


You mean "all" should be equal? It will make trust system a spamming system. First of all, people in default trust list are people whose judgements can be trusted in most cases. They, like all humans, do make mistakes. You are asking that police, common people and scammers to have equal power. Does that make sense? Trust sytem must not be removed or moderated. Obviously, admins can't get into these things everytime and moderate this sytem. They need to appoint moderators for trust system which gives trust system valueless because what if negative feedback was against these mods?

No. People who can be trusted won't be added to default trust list unless their judgements can be trusted. These people tend to work as escrow as they are trustworthy or give loans as they hav me enough BTC.

I don't think they're giving negative trust to people simply because they enjoy doing so which is exactly what a hobby is.

They give negative trust because they feel that a person has bad motives and in future he might scam others, they're doing this to protect other users, not because it's their hobby. And do remember that they're not moderators, they're simply doing a public service trying to keep naive users safe from scammers.

FYI you are now on my trust list.
Quickseller is not and will never be ;)

but i keep Vod; although i dont share his opinion about ms keys (eg. EULAS are worth nothing in my country)

my trust list in case someone is interested in it (suggestions welcome); i use trust depth 1:
jgarzik
Pieter Wuille
Luke-Jr
gmaxwell
smooth
TECSHARE
-ck
~smoothie
Vod
John (John K.)
Tomatocage
DeathAndTaxes
BadBear
Blazr
DannyHamilton
rpietila
~nubbins
fluffypony
DefaultTrust
tspacepilot
~Quickseller

edit: forgot quote tag

@bold: You mean to say that those default trust members are police? I have never heard a better joke than this. this is an open insult to the real police and to my mom as well who was appointed as a judge.

They are common/ordinary people who are behaving as judges/police here.

Why should all users NOT be treated equally (except the admins)? Just because newbies are spamming trust ratings? Then in that case, trust system should be moderated or stop account farming or bring back the newbie jail. And if nobody wants to moderate it, be happy with the newbies spam but other genuine people who give negative trust shouldn't be ignored. I have given a negative trust rating but it wont be counted so that means that person who I called a scammer is a Honest Person? Just because he hasn't received negative trust from this so called Police?


There are so many complaints about these Default Trust Members, but everyone considers the complainer a scammer. Who cares if he/she is telling the truth? He is not even given a chance to prove he is genuine here.


@red: They are mainly given negative trust if they don't use Escrow. My question is who gives me guarantee that if I use Escrow, it will be 100% trusted transaction? Haven't many trades which have used escrow turn out to be fraudulent? So many complaints and scams have been reported despite using an escrow. I have seen so many complaints where a member asked to use his own escrow. I know few Reliable escrows, but their behavior is (I better don't talk about them). Why should I trust a person who I have never met in real life? I don't even know the name of that Escrow or have any ID proof? I don't even trust my own relatives as they cheat me so who will compensate for my loss if the escrow cheats me? Nobody as scams aren't moderated. But here everyone is FORCED to use an escrow. You say these Escrows are police/judges? LOL!

I find it better to trade with users of another forum where scams are moderated. Not here where I am not trusted, not valued and am forced to give my money to an Escrow (whom I don't know at all). I will trade if I want to and cannot be FORCED. Nobody is feeding me and hence cannot dominate me.

So you feel that all users should be treated equal. I'm not convinced that I should treat Supa the same as Badbear.  I would not trade with the former, but would with the latter. And on that same train of thought why should I not value the (trust) opinion of certain members over that of others?

What you're suggesting sounds silly to me. I do not trust those who have proven to be fraudulent and I don't value their trust feedback either. I trust those who have good track records on here more (though I will still do my due diligence) and I value their trust more. Now I pick those members myself, but I did base some decisions of the Default Trust list. It seems like a reasonable default to me.



As said before ratings are given based on the behavior of the user who's suspected of scamming and the experience of the user giving the feedback. Those on the receiving end can defend themselves. Can you provide an example where
  1) someone was suspected of scamming
  2) they provided information to show they were legit
  3) the negative feedback did not get removed and
  4) the person that left the negative feedback is (still) in the Default Trust list?

I guess I have argued enough on this topic and have had my say. I may sound silly and so I think about these Virtual Police Inspectors. For me, I'm educated and I don't care if anyone thinks anything about me.

@bold: That's what I as well do but I even chose not to deal with them if I find their behavior suspicious or find them rude. That should be chosen by me instead of making others forcing me to deal with these trusted members and use them as escrow. There are only 1-2 members whom I trust here and if I want to deal with them, I will. Badbear is the admin so I said that except admins, there shouldn't be any default trust members that I should trust by default but that's me.

I don't know if this user is on the default trust list but he is a legendary member who has left negative trust "Luke-Jr 0: -0 / +0(0)   2014-08-31   0.00000000   Reference   "Too good to be true", or at least teaches people to be scammer victims (see link)" on Bipolar's profile. I noticed that Bipolar isn't a fraud but still many people thought he is suspicious and left negative trust feedback which they removed later but not all who removed it. Now someone will argue that one negative trust doesn't matter. I would only say "Continue your argument."

To be completely honest, I cannot provide you with exactly the scenario you request.  But this comes in part from the subjectivity of many of these qualities.

1) "Scamming": one person's "scam" is another person's business.  Vod considers anyone selling MSCorp stuff to be scamming, but many people consider that an honest day's work (I'm personally ambivalent on this one, I just use it as an example of the interpretive nature of "scamming").

2) "providing evidence": why should one have to prove one's innocence in the face of subjective accusations.  For example, upthread ACCTSeller decided that since I'm suggesting that the trust system be "weakened" I must be an alt of a "scammer" or in some way be up to no good and he therefore neg-reps me (btw, no problem, he's not on default trust, no one will see his trolling feedback).  If he were on default trust, why would I have to "prove" or "provide evidence" that my criticisms of the trust system aren't "a scam".  And how could I ever do so, given the subjective nature of "scam".

So, I don't have (3) or (4) since, as I said above, I don't have a perfect example to feed you.

In general, in this thread, I see people saying "yes, the default-trusters are a kinda unregulated police" and others saying "nah, they are helpful".  I think that I want to acknowledge some truth in both sides, yet I still think the forum could be a better, more drama-free place if we could do something to reign in things a bit.  As I said earlier, even changing the text from a big red "WARNING...CAUTION" to a yellow "This person has received negative feedback from someone on your trust list" would be a big improvement, I think.  Especially because using the phrase "your trust list" would hopefully invite people to ask themselves "my trust list?  I have a trust list?"  and then go ahead and figure out how to use the trust list properly for themselves, if default trust is going to continue to be an opt-out system.

What about giving different weight to trust feedback? I can think of 2 ways of doing it. One would be by trust depth so depth 1's weight is 1, depth 2's is 0.75, and even depth 3's could be 0.5 or something like that, the other option is encouraging users to set their own trust list by weighting 1 one's own list and 0.5 the default trust if included. An account would be red if it received at least 1-weight of negative trust so a single feedback from someone on depth 2 or depth 3 wouldn't be enough but would still appear as trusted feedback.

That does seems like a wonderfully creative idea for weighting the top of default trust.

Full disclosure, I've now become trolled by Quickseller in what seems to be be just the kind of potential abuse that I was suggesting that this would clear up.  To be clear, this was not the case when I started this thread.  I now have quite a vested interest in this issue (I've now been abusively negrepped by a person with whom I've had no business or trades) whereas it used to be more "academic".

Personally I couldn't agree more with the bolded statement. People should make a conscious decision on who they trust. The trust feedback provided is merely a tool that can help in determining who you trust or not. However, for those who do not (for whatever reason) make conscious decisions the Default Trust list is provided... Which is not perfect, but fair enough.


That is because the trust is supposed to work in a (small?) community. If x is on default trust and starts leaving fake trust then y will remove x from their trust list. Default trusters are not police; they have 0 power to stop someone. They can just use words to warn. And if the community values their opinion it will be shown prominently.

I do like any suggestion that triggers people to learn about the trust system though. So if the wording of the warning is changed to encourage that (or a tooltip is added or something) I am all for it.

Seems like every time I turn around there's some issue with default trust.

Maybe all the humans on there should be replaced with versions of that AI that just got released from Swiss police custody, which engage in transactions where they can verify if trust was broken. For example, a PayPal default trust bot sells BTC-equivalent Bitcointalk tokens, ensures the buyer doesn't chargeback for 1 year, positive or neg trust for the risked BTC if they do or don't. A software default trust bot publishes unique coding tasks (that can't be plagiarized) for BTC-equivalent Bitcointalk tokens in various programming languages, then validates the code. Leaves neg trust if code is invalid/errors, removes neg trust if tokens are returned.

Any other ideas?

I'd support a decision to remove default trust from the forum. It's sad to see a forum related to bitcoin have a hierarchy for its trust system in effect. People in power often use it to bash others over personal reasons effectively destroying an account's credibility to the eyes of everyone.

I, for example hate default trust, but won't stop using it (modified) because I'm afraid that I could get out of touch with the rest of the forum since everyone seems to rely on it (probably for the same reason). Theymos keeps telling us that we shouldn't rely on it and that it was initially a solution for newbies but no one will stop using it unless there's a better solution.

My suggestion would be to keep the part of the trust system where successful trades count for a positive rating and force users to form their trust network instead of forcing a default one on them.

Indeed.  This is basically the spirit of my OP.  Here's what's (actually not so) fun: now that you've agreed with me you can expect negative feedback from ACCTSeller (he says that thinking this way is scammy behavior), and if you dare to get snippy with him, you can expect him to go trolling through everything you've ever posted on the board to see if he can manage to potentially find something that he's ballsy enough to neg-rep you for with his main account, Quickseller who's on default trust.  After that you'll get booted from your signature-ad campaign, so I hope you aren't too used to getting a little btc from that advert.

Basically, yes, it would be wonderful if the trust system were taken with the grain of salt it's supposed to be taken with, but as things stand, having a negative feedback (substantiated or not) from someone on default trust actually causes financial repurcussions (even if you don't participate in trading).

How can we solicit mods or admins to comment on the ideas in the OP here?  We've had some good discussion ourselves but it would be nice to find out what the bosses think.

Try not starting so many threads in this section & locking them when they stop going your way. Between that and your prodigious posting, my guess is most have simply put you on ignore :-\

Well first thing, the mods dont have any more say in the trust system than anyone else, though we probably have a more open line of communication with Theymos should we figure out the solutions to the trust system issues.


I agree with a decent portion of this, thanks for actually addressing specific points and making suggestions rather than just complaining. Im just going to mention my thoughts on each point.



1) people on default-trust <=2 aren't able to use their trust in a normal way
Why can't they use Neutral trust? If someone seems shady but you don't want to instantly mark them with a negative, leave them neutral feedback saying why.

a) everyone who doesn't dig into the "meta" of this forum reads their ratings as ground truth
Agreed, but this is a psychology question, how do you get people to read relevant information? How many people have actually gone in depth and read everything in their trust settings? Where would people go to find information about the trust system? There are stickies on other topics all around the forums, and people still post new threads even if there are 3 related to their questions on the front pages.

b) they have to defend the righteousnes of what should be simply their opinion
Agreed again, my solution would be to remove the red/yellow/green and all numbers involved in trust settings and just have a list of feedback. However that too has issues that I dont know how to solve.

2) people who have a negative experience with someone on a default trust list have no real recourse
Posting about it in meta has yielded many results in the past, so I dont necessarily agree with this point. Everyone is going to disagree with their negative feedback whether they are a scammer or not, posting in meta  gets public attention allowing people to read into it themselves and give their opinions. If person B is on Person A's trustlist, and it is proven that Person B does not belong in a position of trust, Person A can remove them, or risk losing their trustworthiness.

 a) mutual negative trust is asymmetric (one person ends up with a GIANT RED WARNING, the other with a gripe buried somewhere in the "untrusted feedback section)
I partially agree, you can still go to Meta and post about it if it isn't fair. If it is fair though, and the retaliatory feedback is unwarranted, then its for the best its in the untrusted section.

3) some people on default trust even make a hobby of marking red on people who haven't ever traded with them but with whom they simply disagree (see, for example, Vod vs MSCorp Key Sellers; or Quickseller vs. people who refuse to do business with him (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1023038.0, inter alia))
This goes back to your first point. I actually see Vod's point of view with the MSkey sellers but I agree that perhaps negative feedback isn't necessary, but perhaps neutral isn't strong enough either. People who abuse the trust system are removed, but what about those people who partially abused it, as they had no better options. I think additional options are necessary, but at the same time, adding 50 different types of feedback would make the system even more confusing and water down their meanings.

As for your suggestions, your third is the only one I agree with. I think the red letters saying TRADE WITH CAUTION have become a safety net that people rely on too heavily. People should be reading who gave feedback, why, and the proof to decide if the claim is valid. As far as default trust, default tends to mean its the automatic opt in, and people opt out from there. Think Internet Explorer, when you have a fresh copy of windows, IE is the default browser, maybe it works fine for someone, but most change their browsers to their prefered setup, why can't it work the same way with Default trust? Sure it will get you on the internet, but there are better options, so change when you have figured out which you like better. Default trust works just fine for newbies, but its not suitable for everyone. Without default trust, newbies wouldn't opt in, nor create their own trust lists, so we would be back to where we were years ago. Trimming the list is the opposite of what should happen, the theory is that by branching out to depth 5,6,20 etc eventually non staff/admins/old trusted members will be the ones moderating default trust, and issues will be solved between individuals as sort of a pseudo decentralized system. While there are still central entities, they become less and less involved.

Thanks TerminatorXL.  Of course I think you're talking about the two threads dealing with Quickseller's personal attack on me.  I locked that thread (and the ancient one that he had necro-bumped) not because "they weren't going my way" but because endless flamewars are not equivalent to fruitfull discussion.  In that situation, it's clear that QS/ACCTSeller is intransigent and that Badbear is the one who will have to adjudicate the matter when he returns.  So I locked it to stop the mudslinging.  It may be worth emphasizing to you that this thread was started before QS's smear campaign against me, so, while it seems surprisingly predictively timed, it's actually not related specifically to that attack campaign.

@Salty, thanks for weighing in.  I think you have to be right that mods are going to have a more direct line of communication with Theymos than we normal folks do.  If you like suggestion (3), perhaps you could bring it up with him.  I think it would be an improvement.

Yes, I can.

1) I was never suspected of scamming.
2) My over 3 years of honestly trading here demonstrates I am legit. I was accused of "lying" on the basis of a topic which is under debate and neither party can prove the validity of the accusation. (additionally "lying" has never been an acceptable use of giving negatives from someone on the default trust.)
3) The negative feedback did not get removed.
4) The person who left the feedback is still on the default trust list.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=915823.0;all

I really like this last idea... So I extended my "default trust list" out to level 4 to see what it does..... I get a really clear picture now..... scammers stick out like a sore thumb and the well trusted do also..... I suggest everyone do it.......

Thanks SaltySpitoon

Expanding your trust list out to level 4 means that a lot of scammers will stay in your trust network which means that their alts will possible have positive trust. The scammers will also have the ability to make it easier to give people negative trust that probably shouldn't have negative trust (just look at how many people woodcollector and his alts have given negative trust to, and I think he is (or at least was) in level 3 or 4 default trust (which is the case with a lot of other scammers)

Noted. The actual text in the feedback makes it clear that it does not relate to your trading history. The situation is not perfect. I recall that this feedback was updated and altered many times. Which kind of demonstrates it is self-moderated. I accept that you disagree with that feedback, but in the end it's their opinion of you. And their opinion is generally valued. Regardless of it being valid or not.


The idea is that others would notice this and exclude those scammers from their trust lists. If it works out as intended it might even help identify account groups (hey, this known scammer trust x, y and z... Let's have a closer look at them... Hey, it's a trust circle... and x,y and z are also scammy).

Of course I'm not sure how it would work out in reality and I didn't take the jump yet. I'm using a very limited trust list myself, and I think I might have more exclusions than inclusions...

I understand your logic completely. However I do think that those depths contain scammers and untrustworthy users because people don't really care about them. If the default depth was 3 or 4 then the users who understand the trust system would be more careful when adding users there and would also use exclusions more heavily.
Most probably default depth won't ever change and who knows if the lists would really be improved if more attention were given so this is just hypothetical. But I do understand what SaltySpitoon is saying. It would be nice to have a way to test new default settings by including a lot of (beta) users but not everyone.

Disclaimer: I'm in default trust on depths 3 and 4 and I just checked my profile looks awesome on those depths! :D

Edit: If more depths were included it'd be useful to be able to give them different weights:

Well as it stands now with a default depth of "2" only 12 people need to be especially villigant with their trust list and those 12 people are generally very active in the forum and can easily be contacted if there are problems with their trust list.

If we were to expand the default trust debpth to "3" then there would be the potential that someone will not be active or would be taking a break from the forum when someone on their list turns scammer. (There are hundreds of people on level 2 default trust). This would also involve a lot more coordination with a much larger group of people turn scammer. Additionally it would be more difficult to mediate and resolve trust related disputes because of the much larger number of people having influence over the ratings that people see by default, many of which probably don't understand who is generally appropriate to be on their trust list as the trust system is very complex.

Additionally anyone who feels that debpth of "3" or "4" is more appropriate or "better" then "2" is able to make this change. The "2" setting is only the default.

I love how people's own standards suddenly morph into some thing else when they can be demonstrated to be in violation of their own values, instead of simply examining ones self and modifying their beliefs/behavior. It shows how much people demand what they are familiar with, right or wrong.

The trust system is designed to be about your trading history regardless of whatever little addendum people want to put into it to pretend it is ok. The fact that he modified his trust only shows he was pressured by the general public to reign in his abuse. He removes it for a while or turns it to a neutral, then next time he is offended he does it again knowing that everyone has already read about it the first time and no one will bother to look a second. That is not self moderation, that is a strategy to wear down the attention of the public of the forum.

Leaving a negative rating for "lying" has never been an acceptable standard for leaving a negative trust rating from some one on the default trust.  In fact Beastlymac was removed from the default trust for doing this ONE TIME because a user was attempting to extort him by slandering him with lies, and he was removed.

There are no official rules about how to use the trust system posted anywhere on the forum. It is purposely left this way so that an environment of selective enforcement can be maintained, so that a small group of individuals can dictate what can and can not be said on this forum whilst maintaining an illusion of openness and decentralization.

You can also check out my thread here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1035687.0

Where I have provided all the proof of not being a scammer, and I literally have no one caring to even look at it.

At best, if it doesn't effect people personally or one of their pals, no one gives a shit about trust abuse complaints and ignore them 90% of the time. At worse it just becomes a form of entertainment for compulsive emotionally stunted adults. Then you become the target for protesting the situation. If you are new, you are just a scammer. If you have built a reputation, then that is something they can extort you with and it is just a matter of how big of a mob they need to rally. Justice at its best.

1) True.
2.a) You lied saying staffs protect Vod even after SaltySpitoon explained. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=915823.msg10062871#msg10062871
2.b) Lying is a quality of an untrustworthy person. Trust system is not only for trades and that's why it is trust feedback not trade feedback.
3) It was changed to neutral feedback and you continued what you did earlier and it was reverted.
4) True.

TBH, I think this anti-trust_system behaviour of yours came after you were removed from default trust list. You are trustworthy enough for me except your judgements.

2) Just because people do not agree with my conclusions does not make me a liar. What a childish way to look at the world. By that standard you are a liar because I don't agree with you calling me a liar and it would be acceptable for me to negative rate you. SaltySpitoon is not the god of Bitcointalk. He does not speak for everyone even if he had the ability to know everything. His opinion does not negate my opinion and magically some how make it a lie. Furthermore Saltyspitoon is just a mod, he has very little power to do anything on the forum, so he can hardly speak for higher level staff either. The statements I made are a matter of debate. Declaring them untrue doesn't magically make them not true or a lie.

2b) No. "Negative - You were scammed or you strongly believe that this person is a scammer." This is the standard for leaving a negative rating. Saying something that upsets Vod is not equivalent to scamming.

3) It was changed to a neutral after lots of public pressure. I called him out later on his abusive behavior regarding MSDN key sellers, as a direct result he changed the rating again back to a negative knowing people would not bother to look a second time. Proof is here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=915823.msg10890378#msg10890378

Are you trying to tell me that I am not allowed to be critical of anyone if they call me a liar and they are on the default trust list? Is that what you mean by "you continued what you did earlier"? Since when is it acceptable to negative rate people from the position of the default trust list because you don't like what people are saying? It is amazing how much free speech is protected around here... until some one says some thing one of their buddies don't like. No matter how many BS excuses come out of Vod's mouth, he left me a negative rating for pointing out his abusive behavior in an attempt to intimidate me into silence, something other users were removed from the default trust list for for doing ONCE, he however has done it over and over again to many people.

The trust system has failed and is nothing more than a way to write off new users as "socks" or "scammers" and extort people who have built up reputations into silence from a centralized position of power.

2) You said staff is protecting Vod and even created a thread about staff's selective enforcement conspiracy things. How can we agree with this conclusion? How can theymos benefits from these conspiracies? Don't tell me it's money because he can earned more and there is no money involved in these feedback. Your words are false. Furthermore, how are staffs protecting Vod when he is in trust list of Tomatocage.
 I am hoping you are joking about SaltySpitoon. He is a Global Moderator. There is no "higher" staff than Global Moderator. He has more than "very little" power. SaltySpitoon is a neutral diplomat. I haven't seen him making a biased statement/opinion. Furthermore, it wasn't an opinion, it was a statement.
 "Matter of debate"? You said a false things without even discussing. Obviously, the post you made against staff is not in a "discussing" or "debating" style, it is made on your feelings and your conclusion. So whatever you conclude aren't false? You are spreading disinformation but I am wishing it to be a misinformation. Hope this wish can be fulfilled.

3) I looked meaning of "abusive" but it isn't fitting here. According to *your version* of abuse, aren't you being an abuser? You started this anti-Vod war when you were removed from default trust list. Till that day, staffs are ok & DefaultTrust is ok. From that day forth, DefaultTrust is bad.


You can if you aren't telling a lie. Partial yes. It is still not allowed.

Edit: TECSHARE has made some changes. So replying.


BS comes from everyones' mouth. It is clear "users who done once" is about you. Feedback you left and feedback Vod left starts from same end but reach at different place. There is slight difference in them.

"people who have built up reputations" is also you. Nobody silenced you for good things you did. You still can. Sadly, you are still going for makeup conspiracy theories. Bitcointalk is centralized and hence, trust system. This centralized power doesn't give Vod special status.

You are way off topic. Move your reply here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=853522.msg11182411

I really don't see why some people defend default trust so much. Clearly, there are some people benefiting from its existence but defending it is just hypocritical. There could be a better system and we all know it. It's sad that the entire forum has to use such a shitty system because some 'prominent' community member jump on to defend it whenever someone points out how bad it is.

Thank you! Done but quoted instead of moving. Didn't know off topic was meant only for me. :-\

It is quite possible that I don't see the entire picture here.  But from what I can tell, the forum moderators are wanting to grrow some sort of organic network of trust where they don't have to moderate it, it basically self regulates based on participation of many people and their activities.  However, I think that one thing that's getting in the way of that is that not many people actually participate, ie, they just see a trust warning on some people and take that as ground truth.  Then we have a lot of drama because others are working to be trust-rangers, jumping through all kinds of hoops and loops in order to be known as scam-busters who keep the boards safe from the bad guys.  But a small collection of trust-rangers isn't the same thing as that large, organic, unmoderated trust system that saltyspittoon mentioned upthread.

Several folks have said that if trust were opt-in rather than opt-out that that would be dangerous---it would remove using trust system as a crutch certainly, but they say that even the crutch is better than nothing before you know how to walk.

However, there seems to be near universal agreement that the actual text of the warning could be changed to both a) be more informative about the actual state of affairs and b) be more inviting to learn how to use the trust system for yourself.

Theymos, lets have "negative trust" warning changed to: "This person has received negative feedback from someone in your trust network."   That message is far more reflective of the actual situation and provides an invitation to figure out exactly who is in your trust network and why.

+1. Changing trust network to trust list is better. We may have to face threads in Meta about trust network even if they know about trust list. I also suggest to put a small link near it which have a breif explanation about trust system.*

* Borrowed from Marco's post.

Not sure why no one brought up the fact that the whole thing's conceptually flawed. This "organic network" is grown from the seed which is the default trust, and can't be anything other than continuation of the breed. You plant apple seeds, you're going to get nothing but apple trees. True fact.

...I don't trust anyone that trusts Luke-Jr...

I would suggest having any sort of Default Trust list something that should be Opt-In (read: They have to press a button or select a checkbox in their account preferences to enable Default Trust listings for their account)

Ideally, each user should start with a blank trust list, and build it up themselves over time based on their own experiences here on the forums.

We can't enforce this on newbies. Newbies don't know who to trust and who shouldn't. So default trust list is needed. When they understand more about this trust sytem, they will change their trust list. We shouldn't enforce them to change because there are many people who don't want to change and people who don't care. Persons who know about trust system, alter their trust list.

* Here, Newbies refers to both noobs to Bitcointalk and noobs to trust system.

What do you need trust for anyways?? Like what can you do with trust here in this forum?? The only issue i see people complaining about is on the lending part of the forum wich is where most of the red trust comes from, as long as you use a collateral no one is gonna give a shit if you have red or green trust

If this were true, why would Theymos add a feature such as exclusions allowing him and the highest ranking members in trust ratings to negate anyone adding some one to the default trust list whom he unilaterally chooses? They like to say they don't moderate trust and and don't get involved, but they clearly chose to over and over to get involved again in a very selectively applied way. Then they claim they are acting in an individuals capacity and not as a staff or vice-versa to absolve themselves of interference they claim doesn't happen.

The trust system was supposedly meant to rate ones trading behavior to demonstrate who trades honestly. Over time it degraded into a weird political/popularity contest, then into mob rule. Does a trust system designed to bring honest traders to the top of the trust rankings need to have yet another way to give those at the top even more ability to exclude people to settle petty vendettas? They claim there is not enough people participating, but they make the standards so inclusive and nepotistical that only a select few are able to have any effect on the system. I have been trading here for over 3 years and have been trusted with thousands of dollars and have always fulfill my agreements with hundreds of traders, many of which I personally introduced to this forum. Yet according to Theymo's standards his system that supposedly ranks honest traders, I should not have a say. Theymos doesn't want a decentralized system, he wants to sit on top of the list and rule by decree.

What Xian01 says is more or less exactly what I argue for in the OP.  I know that MZ thinks that default trust is saving the world, one noobie at a time, and this is almost certainly how the trust-rangers our there feel about themselves, but I'm not so convinced.  First, if someone is willing to give all their money away without looking into who/why/where etc don't they simply deserve to learn that lesson so that they can be safer in the future?  Isn't it the case that any protection they gain from the trust rangers is just temporary and delusional---ie, sooner or later they're going to have to start figuring out the world for themselves, right?  I mean just because people are noobies to bitcointalk doesn't mean they aren't rational, self-controlling adults with the sense to decide who and who to not give money to.  The idea that noobies are somehow incapable in a way that the rest of us aren't seems spurious to me.

I agree. The default trust list just creates a false sense of security and a feeling that they don't need to research their trading partner because there are red and green numbers. In reality all it does is create a protected class within this illusion of scam prevention.

Saying again, this forum and trust system is centralized not decentralized.

Trust system is designed to help others. People shouldn't judge people by looking trust rating but by looking trust feedback and reference. Trust feedback is necessary to know who to trust and who not to. Your saying tells you want to get into default trust list. I don't know why though. You still are trusted and can do trades. Just 1 trusted negative feedback doesn't make you scammer. People still trust you but somehow, your goal is to make Vod remove from default trust list like you stated in your thread or perhaps, to get rid of this system.


Many noobs to Bitcointalk made many mistakes. Everytime, we may next noob won't do this but they do. You have been much longer than me and I am pretty sure you have seen these. Most of the persons in this forum doesn't have an answer to "who". They only have a username, which is not enough to trust a person. If they want to decied who to trust and who not to, there should be feedback about the person. They need some support. They will sooner or later studies this and will have the ability which they didn't have with which they can trade. Experience is way superior than knowledge. That's the difference here.


Nope. We will have to make our own judgement, anyways. Trust system plays a role in judging.

Can I ask you one thing? If ACCTseller is an alt of quickseller .... Why did he leave a negative trust also from his alt account? It doesn't have any sense or an I wrong? I only want to ask that thing publicly.

Thanks for the attention.

The trust left by ACCTseller was the result of something that should not result in a trade with caution tag, but is still something that others should be warned about - leaving such trust is a third option above leaving negative/neutral trust from your default trust account. The negative I left for scamming TF is because tspacepilot clearly scammed and an actual scam is more then enough of a reason to cause someone to have a trade with caution tag

What people should do and what people actually do in reality are two very different things. People almost always superficially review a person and will move on to the next trader at the slightest question of impropriety. The Bitcoin community is a hyperparanoid environment because of the constant barrage of scammers.

I would appreciate it if you did not try to dictate to me what my own motivations are, I can do that for myself thanks. The default trust is a broken system, and it causes more harm than good. The same goes for Vod.

Only some of them are hyperparanoid. See scam accusations, service discussion, r/bitcoin and probably articles too. People are still being scammed.


I don't know how I did it. I still think I didn't. Anyway, I will try not to.


Like theymos said, feel free to suggest a new system which can replace current trust system. If anybody can come up with a better system, I will support it. Saying "remove DefaultTrust" isn't enough. Come with a better idea...

He did this because at the time it was not completely public that the two accounts were alts of each other and he was on a personal vendetta to smear me as he stated using the ACCTSeller.  He made the mistake of abusing the trust system in this way and eventually he'll end up having to account for it.  For the moment, badbear is out of town and there's nothing we can do.  Please don't derail this thread into a quickseller complaint thread, there are plenty of those and while I admit he seems to be among the most self-righteous, abusive and problematic of the "trust-rangers", this is not really about him in particular but about the general problems in the system.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1031791.msg11150053#msg11150053

How would this account for the fact that certain human judgment is necessary when trying to look at if something is a scam or not. The trust system is not a trade feedback system, but is a trust system. This would also not account for the fact that it is not possible to for a computer to know for sure if a trade was successful or not (e.g. buying bitcoin for cash in mail, mailing some physical good to a buyer, etc). It would also not account for things like people who are clearly engaging in trades for no reasons other then to get additional feedback (e.g. clear trust farming)

The bolded bit sounds an awful lot like what your "opponents" have been saying; humans lacking both innate judgement and ability to judge even who should and shouldn't be "trust rangers" - as no human is omnipercipient - still get scammed.

I left off those examples because it would have taken me too long at the time to rough sketch the bot code. However, there a number of virtual mailboxes that operate off http://about.usps.com/forms/ps1583.pdf - a method that could conceivably be used to verify physical item receipt via the bot running a counterfeit check on the scanned bills and object recognition of physical goods shot from the proper perspective. Ultimate disposal of the cash or goods would probably have to be done by the agent in exchange for service credit or conversion to an ACH payment into the bot's account, which I suppose would be used to buy BTC and/or pay for more goods/gigs, or the bot's own hosting fees.

Trust farming could be screened for by having alternate bot usernames or human investigators retest anyone who gets trusted by the default trust bots.

Well it sounds like your system would be a good trade feedback system. Although it would not do anything to prevent scams from happening in the first place. For example if a user is offering a too good to be true offer then how is an unexperienced user suppose to know that it is probably a scam? I know that tomatocage often screens people's actual willingness to accept escrow with newbie accounts and flags them with his own account when they show signs of not accepting escrow (e.g. they stop responding). What about people who make statements that they are desperate for money then all of a sudden start to sell something very expensive? What about face-to-face deals and other deals not done within the forum?

Again, the bolded.

Too good to be true offers are received by everyone with email on a periodic basis - advance fee fraud. And in postal mail - other types of fraud. And via the phone. And everyone behind a door that strangers can easily get to, who parks their vehicle in public, or who can communicate with any other human being in any fashion whatsoever. If you don't go through life with the mindset of "trust no one, verify everyone", you will get scammed.

Nothing can prevent scams (on bitcointalk) from happening in the first place other than pre-post/pre-edit moderating all contact methods out of posts and eliminating the private message system, links to instant messengers, etc.

The most favorable description of default trust is "the good" - but logically, you cannot simultaneously have "the perfect" you described in bold: the good but flawed system is mutually exclusive of the perfect system.

It seems that those who illogically defend default trust the most, while hypocritically making "the perfect" the enemy of their "good", must be the ones who come up with


that ACTUALLY prevent(s) scams from happening in the first place.

ETA: Let's draw an analogy, though I'm not a master at it: you are stranded on a desert island with a laptop, satellite internet, and a cup, but do not call for rescue. You scoop up seawater with your cup and drink it. You do not drink any other water or liquid. You post on the internet that you're feeling worse by the day, describing your symptoms. People ask "what are you drinking?" - you tell them only unprocessed seawater. People tell you that you can't do that without eventually killing yourself. You tell them "but there's all the water I'd ever need to drink right here from the ocean! Screw you guys!" and throw your laptop into the ocean. Rather than heading inland to search for fresh water, moisture-rich foods, you die of extreme salt intake.

Economic suicide is happening everywhere, irrespective of "good" systems. At least TRY to be perfect, even if it's rarely possible to be.

It is pretty simple, don't be a scammer, liar, thief, and you should have no problems.

Saying one thing in a message then going back on it is essentially lying especially when trading.

Most people that are complaining about the trust system simply have a hard time staying on the honest side of the fence. They have their own agenda of wheeling and dealing to their benefit.

Just be open and honest and upfront.

Seems to be a challenge for a lot of people here though.

I'm a huge troll sometimes but the funny thing is I am the most honest person likely on the forum and in person. I don't have any hidden agenda and everything is out in the open.

Scammers usually will hide behind a veil.

Simple as that.

 :D

Correct, the staff that are on default trust have better things to do than get involved in Default trust stuff. I can't speak for everyone on default trust, but I can speak for a few staff members/admins here when I say, its a pain in the ass for us. We don't need to manipulate trust, while I disagree that people should trust forum staff just for being staff, that is how it is. I can't control how people think, but whenever I'm trading with people, I'm the one who has to insist on using escrow, so people aren't pressured into sending to me first. Theymos is one of the most trusted people in the bitcoin scene, if he wanted to abuse people's trust, he could have done it far more easily than with the trust system.

Everyone knows the trust system has issues, it is just currently the best system there is. Ears are wide open, and hopefully these types of discussions yield a better result, but it always comes down to a few factors that mess up propositions. It can't be decentralized, because then it is decided by those who have the most accounts. We don't want it ruled by a small group of people like it is now, but you can't trust the majority. feedback can't be moderated by anyone, or its useless. But without any type of moderation its subject to spam. We shouldn't be tagging people frivilously, but we shouldn't wait until after a scam happens to tag someone.  The system needs rules so people aren't confused, but then the system isn't flexible enough to adapt, also who sets the rules?

In any case, I agree with the bolded.

*edit*
and as a side note, in response to the Tecshare MZ conversation that I dont feel like quoting, as a Global Moderator I don't have any special say on anything as far as default trust goes. I'm on default trust because I'm quite neutral and Theymos trusted me enough to give me a shot on it. I feel I do a pretty decent job at addressing all of the heated trust debates as a relatively neutral party. Vod isn't on my trust list, so his actions don't concern me in the slightest. Tecshare wasn't removed from default trust for lying or being untrustworthy, he was removed for losing his temper and being vindictive. Default trust isn't 100% about who is trustworthy, its about who leaves accurate feedback for others. The most trustworthy person in the world who leaves shoddy feedback will be removed.

PS. The Butter Zone, I like your idea but I dont think its very feasible. It sounds like a feature Ebay will spend half a billion dollars developing in the year 2057.

I think it is pretty clear that you just want the people who keep tagging all of your accounts and all of your HYIP's off of default trust so it will be easier for you to scam  :D

The thing is that people throughout the community trust and respect me enough so that regardless of my status on default trust that they will listen when I say that I think you are running a particular scam so default trust or not, the "investments" that flow into your HYIP's will screech to a halt once I out them as being run by you  :D  ;D

You are right, why should I be upset when my reports continually go ignored and some one is harassing me in the only area I am allowed to post items for sale. Rules are only to be used as cudgels to enforce upon others, not to protect them, that's no fun. I offered a compromise that would make us both whole again, but he did nothing but escalate the entire time.

If it was true that people who leave shoddy feedback would be removed, why is it that VOD is still there? Some how him negative rating me for "lying" about him is acceptable, but me leaving a negative rating for some one harassing me in my own OP's is stifling free speech? He has made a long term pattern of exhibiting this behavior, but there is always an excuse as to why it is ok... for him.

You mistake me being agitated with losing my temper and being vindictive. Perhaps if there were official rules posted for the trust system some where on the forum none of this would have happened to begin with, but if the rules were posted they might apply to EVERYONE, and we can't have that.

Yeah, its too bad that someone didn't get to your reports in a timely fashion, make whatever excuses you wish, you still over reacted in my opinion. You would have to talk to Tomatocage about why Vod is on his trust list, as he is the only one who can answer that. I don't have any say with what Tomatocage or anyone else on default trust does with their lists.  I dont know if his negative rating for you is acceptable, and its not for me to judge, because I haven't chosen to add Vod to my trust list so its not my concern. Steadfast rules cause people to seek loopholes. For the same reason forum moderation is left up to the judgment of collective individuals. We can set guidelines, but if we set rules then the system becomes ineffective. Think about Paypal's or Ebay's rules. Because of their policies, representitives are forced to make decisions that are insane. They are willing to give up rational judgement in order to follow those rules, "Oh you have proof you completed this transaction? Oh, well we don't have protocol for this type of transaction, so the other party wins by default, sorry you are boned". As far as trust system rules, the community dictates them. Thats part of the reason I can't say whether or not Vod's feedback for you is fair, I can't say whether its ok for people to leave feedback for those they haven't traded with, etc. The feedback system is regulated by the community, so that it can adapt as new issues arise. The discussions in meta and generally accepted practices set what is Ok for people to do.

I wonder if those guys who coded the AI bot that got "arrested" by Swiss police will be happy to be paid half a billion, or mad that they had to wait until 2057 to be paid when they could have my ideas coded in a year. Unless I'm overestimating their abilities and they're about to have criminal charges filed against them because their bot was barely doing anything itself.

I'm talking about the entirety of the system you proposed including the anti fraud scanning features and such.

I see. So we shouldn't have rules because there might be loopholes. Solid logic. They have a word for places without rule of law, its called a dictatorship. I see how you excuse yourself from the situation by claiming no involvement in him being on the trust list, but that still doesn't absolve you of your statements that any abuse of the default trust will be dealt with, because clearly it isn't the case. As far as guidelines, no one put any guidelines for how to deal with the default trust either. How exactly are people expected to follow rules that are unwritten? Do you really expect everyone on the default trust list to review all of the dispute cases that come forward? I am not talking about anything like eBay or Paypal, I am talking about a clear set of official rules everyone can understand so people don't just have to GUESS what is and is not ok.  You aren't seeking a restorative form of justice but rather a punitive one which harms everyone involved instead of allowing people to fix their own problems.

It is convenient that you can just absolve yourself of involvement, when in reality you could exclude Vod from your trust list, along with one other person on the default trust list, and he would no longer have the ability to abuse his position on the default trust. You have a brain and the ability to review the situation, as well as act upon it, but you refuse to. This is what I am talking about when I describe preferential treatment. There is always an excuse when it is inconvenient. If it makes you look good then it is justice. If it is inconvenient, ignore its existence. This is fundamentally what is wrong with the system in place here currently. It becomes a popularity contest, not rule of law.

It's pretty odd that you mix reasoning with attacking a person's past.

Anyway, what's wrong with default trust is that it gives people no reason to create their own trust list. Theymos has said it before that we shouldn't value it that much, but how the hell are we going to ignore it if it's placed into everyone's account by default. Would it be that hard for the administration to try and teach people and newcomers how to modify their own trust list? If they did that effectively we wouldn't need a default trust list.

Isn't cryptosplit a scammer and runs a scam website? I can't see any feedback from you. Why? Is it because you worked as an escrow for him?

You worked as an escrow inspite of knowing that it was an investment/scam site? Scammers profile: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=503558

There are guidelines, solid rules cause issues. I personally don't agree with what Vod does sometimes, but I don't disagree with what he does all the time. I don't feel the need to exclude him nor do I feel the need to add him to my trust list. I could name you a handful of "rules" to default trust, but others might disagree. Its not my place to set rules, and it's not Theymos' place to set rules. Set your own rules, get people to agree, and those are the rules. Talk hypocrisy, you don't think it's fair that one person thinks differently than another person? I must exclude Vod because you want me to? You inherited your default trust position from me. I no longer wished to stake my reputation on the fact that you would make rational decisions, so I removed you from my trust list. Tomatocage is willing to stake his reputation on Vod, and that's his choice. Lets force people to make decisions based on what I think and not what the general consensus is. That's not a very non dictorial approach either. You keep trying to equate different branches of default trust, but each human rationalizes things differently. Perhaps Tomatocage is more patient than I? But regardless, just as Default trust inherits its rules from the community, it also inherits its meaning and trust from the community. If people disagree with Vod and Tomatocage refuses to cut him, Tomatocage looses his trust in the community making his branch worthless. Default trust only means as much as the community as a whole makes it.

In my opinion people are using the trust system wrong, but who am I to tell everyone that they are doing it wrong? I'm responsible only for myself, if you don't like how it works, make your own trust list and get others to use it. "Default" by definition does imply that it is automatically opted in until you change it yourself. Stop fighting default trust and as a community make an attempt to replace it yourself, it is designed to be used however you want to use it.

Not a surprise. There was another profile here pagalwana (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=379178), who received a negative trust for being an alt of a scammer, he even had the exact same case like me, where the account was sold, and even after initially giving him a negative trust, Quickseller removed it after escrowing the deal to sell the account, where he was paid some fees for it.

Do you mean that cryptosplit's account was sold too?

The case you are talking about is fine IMHO as the person who bought the account does not deserve the negative trust of pagalwana. But in Cryptosplit's case, it seems odd as he is a scammer and has the negative ratings of Badbear as well but not of Quickseller. I want to know why because may be he escrowed the deal and according to him Cryptosplit is honest  ???

I'm sorry as I don't know your case. I haven't read about it yet.

From what I've read, the optical recognition stuff I described already exists for counterfeit detection (NEC, et al), so no need to wait until 2057.

Don't know about Cryptosplit, but for my account, it was part of a loan default , and went to this guy Ume(who had given the loan) after original Twipple failed to repay loan.
I from my original account, had started a scam accusation that Ume was possibly giving out loans, only to get accounts from defaulters, and Ume had given himself a positive trust which I proved to be his alt.

Now later, I bought the account from him(from another account), and 2 months later Quickseller gave it a negative trust also saying that I am Ume, and another scammer tacoman, based on an address Twipple had posted for that loan request. I provided all proof that I bought it from Ume, and it was me because of whom Ume had got the negative trust, but Quickseller didn't believe me.
But he agreed to pagalwana owner's request to be sold and have the trust removed from his account.
I also did some recent research into the address Twipple had posted for the loan request, and found out some things, which led me to believe it was an exchange sites/gambling sites address, which usually sweeps addresses from multiple accounts.

So from what I can understand, you bought an account which was marked as a loan defaulted account. Right?

So basically Quickseller is punishing you for a crime that the original owner did. It's sad if it has happened as if he was the escrow of this deal, he probably would need no proof that you bought that account. He himself sells loan defaulted accounts as well and says that the negative rating given by the loan giver will be removed after the loan is payed.

Did you use an escrow to buy this account from Ume? Or you bought the account directly from Ume?

In this case, again it's proved that account selling/buying shouldn't be allowed and basically buying an account that has a defaulted loan or belongs to a scammer can make it useless with a negative trust rating.

The account was actually the collateral the lender got in return because of the loan default.

As for the crime, I don't think the original owner did any crime, its just that the address he(twipple) posted for the loan , and another address some scammer guy posted for the loan request are somehow related(look at my trust description, left by quickseller).

As for what the scam was or other info, why I believe its not the alt account quickseller claims it to be , read this : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1035687.0

There are no official guidelines for using the default trust posted now either, don't start lying now. Expecting every user to review every trust dispute to know the non-rules is frankly retarded. So its not your place or Theymo's place to make rules, only enforce them selectively? "get people to agree, and those are the rules" Thats what is known as a popularity contest or mob rule. History shows how well this form of government works. If this is really what you think this is the best way, then why is there a default trust list to begin with? Oh yes, that's right that same mob might take over if it was gone. Can't have the supposedly decentralized system be decentralized now can we?

No one is forcing you to think anything, I am calling out the fact that you as well as other members of the forum staff only enforce the rules when you want to exclude some one for the crime of being unpopular, not because you are following a set of rules that are the same for everyone. This is called nepotism and or selective enforcement, and it does nothing but destroy communities in addition to driving away contributing members that dared to say things the trustmasters don't approve of. The trust system is broken, and yes people are using it wrong. However how exactly do people follow unposted rules? The staff have the ability to set standards and enforce them, instead everything is left ambiguous, confusing, and infested with Nepotism and infighting, and the staff primarily use their authority within the trust system to settle their personal disputes not to aid the community. There are no rules, you leave people to learn by example, then set horrible examples of how to use the system. Why should you take any responsibility for that?

There a few things you don't seem to comprehend. Theymos can enforce his trust list as selectively as he likes. I can enforce my trust list as selectively as I like, Tomatocage can do what he wishes with his trust list. Being on default trust isn't a right. Self interest is the motivation to make your own trust lists in the best interest of the community. If I put a bunch of jerks on my trust list, by association, I'm a jerk. I don't want my feedback to be watered down by people who inherit trust from me that then abuse their positions. Perhaps Tomatocage feels that the good that Vod does is worth the controversy, but hence the reason Vod isn't on my trust list, I dont. Lets all go tell Tomatocage he can't trust who he wants because it would be unfair to people who were treated differently by different people.

There are no official guidelines for trust? Leave accurate feedback is one, don't make up BS trade values, does common sense need to be posted? Need I remind people to breathe? As I stated, for things that aren't common sense, it is up for the community to decide. The Staff didn't decide whether or not people could leave feedback if they hadn't traded with that person, others did. Who is popular on the default trust list? Is there a correlation between traits in a person that others like and whether or not they are suitable to help the community? No, as proposed we can't have a decentralized feedback system. Look at forum polls, how much do you trust their results? Without some sort of weight, the feedback system would just be a place for everyone to collect spam feedback from someone's angry socks. Majority rule is not the way to go, centralization isn't the way to go either, but without a better idea, putting faith in people who have some sort of long term stake in the community is a better bet.

The problem is, you are completely disillusioned by your vindictiveness. You blame staff for everything that has happened, because A) a staff member directly removed you from their default trust list B) You made an ass of yourself which lead others to not trust you C) It was all because Staff members didn't help you in a timely fashion. Why would the staff be out to get you at the time? You keep refering to forum staff as the moderators of the trust system that have this presence over others. Have we threatened someone who didn't obey with bans? Are all forum staff members even on Default trust? What reasons would they have for trying to silence you, or bully you? What does the forum staff have to do with anything? Are we talking about default trust here, or deleting posts? If forum staff had this overwhelming power you claim they do, why would we put up with the constant harassment and insults? You can't back any of your statements with anything you can prove as true, you make a theory and base your factual statements on those theories without stopping to think, wait... does any of this make sense in the slightest? What would Theymos or the other staff have to gain by controlling the default trust list? Why would we want to involve ourselves in squabbles between people? Wouldn't it just take up more of our time and drag us into discussions like that are tedious?

If you feel like a written list of rules would help everyone out, why don't you make it?

Could you be anymore condescending? I understand fine, I just don't accept your narrative as an excuse for lack of standards and posted rules. No one is saying other people should be told who to trust. I am pointing out you have the ABILITY to take action, but you refuse to. Just because you know the rules as a moderator does not mean that everyone else is just magically as familiar with them as you are.

"Without some sort of weight, the feedback system would just be a place for everyone to collect spam feedback from someone's angry socks." Sorry to be the one to tell you, but this is exactly what the current trust system is. I don't have "faith" in the default trust list or the trust system itself. These are people, not Gods, and I don't worship at the alter of the default trust. People do fucked up things like humans do without a frame of reference known as rule of law to provide a clear line of what is and is not acceptable. Human beings are notorious for being able to justify very fucked up things without any outside forces checking them.

You know what your problem is? You confuse me not giving a shit if you like what I have to say with not having awareness of it. I don't blame staff for everything that happened, I blame them for not having any kind of posted or regularly enforced standards as well as not taking any responsibility for their own part in the disorder caused by the lack of clear rules. They enforce their own personally serving form of "justice", but if it doesn't personally serve them, then suddenly they have more important things to do and they are too busy, or are magically always looking the other way. There is nothing that complicated about it. It is just plain old self serving behavior and nepotism. I have answered many of the questions you are repeating again before in the past. You pretend like individuals who are also admins and staff some how can act as an individual without also being an admin or staff at the same time. This is just doublespeak and an excuse to quietly moderate the trust system while also pretending you don't overtly.

What exactly about me speaking critically about mods/admins/staff is so insulting and harassing? Because it might offend you, suddenly it means I am harassing you for having an opinion you don't agree with and not submitting to your viewpoint? Do you even read what you type? What I am saying makes plenty of sense, you are just very eager to do whatever mental gymnastics that are necessary for you to continue pretending like the points I raise aren't actually an issue.

So I bolded a few things. First, "You have the ABILITY to take action, but you refuse to" You are completely correct there. If I took action and laid down the law, then it would be the staff controlled trust system you keep claiming it is. I don't have the time nor the desire to moderate the trust system. The community can regulate its own trading practices. Did the staff tell people they have to use escrow, or only loan to people with collateral? Or is that a community founded guideline?

"People do fucked up things like humans do without a frame of reference known as rule of law" again, you are correct once again, but what if moderators do fucked up things like humans and set that frame of reference in a harmful or useless way? Everything is designed so that Moderators have limited involvement in them. We don't need to babysit 400,000 members, nor do we have the overwhelming staff power needed to do so. We keep the boards free of spam (or at least try to) the rest is on you.

" I don't blame staff for everything that happened, I blame them for not having any kind of posted or regularly enforced standards as well as not taking any responsibility for their own part in the disorder caused by the lack of clear rules." I can cite tens of instances where you say the exact opposite. You take no personal responsbility for anything, you just blame it on the staff. If you would like me to cite quotes, I can, it will just take me 10 minutes of looking through any thread in Meta that has anything to do with the trust system. But, again we are blurring lines here, are you talking about moderation policy or default trust?

" They enforce their own personally serving form of "justice", but if it doesn't personally serve them, then suddenly they have more important things to do and they are too busy, or are magically always looking the other way."

https://i.imgur.com/qAXMYrN.png

Being busy just kind of happens as a result of a website having thousands of members that are free to say whatever they want. At the time of writing this post, I have another 420 reports that are unhandled at this moment. Sometimes they take a while to get to, but as I explained to you back then, I don't handle reports for things that I have a stake in. I don't handle reports by anyone I'm involved with in anyway because I couldn't be fair and do so.

"This is just doublespeak and an excuse to quietly moderate the trust system while also pretending you don't overtly." Again, moderators are busy enough, we have no motivations for quietly moderating the trust system. That would just further involve us in more time consuming crap. What would we have to gain? If we wanted to rule the trust system with an iron fist, we would have just left Theymos in charge of scammer tags, or gone to an explicit staff central trust system. What can I accomplish now being on default trust, that I couldn't just being a moderator if I so wished to abuse people?

"Because it might offend you, suddenly it means I am harassing you for having an opinion you don't agree with and not submitting to your viewpoint?" Isn't that exactly what you left Armis negative feedback for, and that was a single occasion that took place over what, a couple of hours? This has been ongoing for months. I'm not offended by the constant attacks, I'm annoyed. Everyone is welcome to their opinions, but posting your quazi off topic, "Everyone is out to get me!" crap is getting old, especially when your points are debunked and you just continue on with the same arguments. Did you expect that you can just make completely unfounded claims and not have anyone respond to them? Try taking responsibility for yourself, create a new trust branch, get everyone to create their own trust branches, show us that you can rebel and save us time, its a win win.

This is the kind of reply which is a kneejerk for you, it's what you say to anyone who disagrees with you or has been harmed by you.  You used to say it to me everytime I disagreed with you: "I think it's pretty clear you are an idiot who is just spamming his signature."  It's what you said to me when I accused you of attempting a smear campaign on me "I think it's pretty clear you are an idiot who deserves to be smeared".

This kind of reply is really not helpful here.  We are discussing ways to improve the trust system so that people down't have to cowtow to trust rangers like you and so that meta isn't constantly clogged up with Quickseller is giving me negative trust for no reason.  Please try to stay on topic here.

@salty, upthread you enthusiastically agreed with my suggestion to change the warning text to something less inflammatory and more descriptive.  I, however, don't have a very direct line of communication with Theymos.  Is this something that you can bring up with him? 

Can do, I don't have any special persuasive power, but I can make sure Theymos sees the idea.

^^^Thanks!

Its great that you love talking about me so much, its cute, but its getting a little old. If my ideas are so baseless then my arguments will fail on their own right, and you shouldn't have a problem with me stating them should you? You are the one "blurring the lines" here. You have plenty of time to attack me and defend your position, but funny how all the other points I made about how flawed the trust system is, are just glossed over in exchange for your continuing attempts at character assassination and marginalization. It is pretty clear you aren't interested in a discussion, or even staying on topic. You just like to "hear yourself speak" and want to "win" as you always do.

It's great that you love talking about me so much as well - it's cute too.  And no but!   :)

You just like to "read your own posts" and want to "win" as you always do.

Flame war isn't really appropriate here folks.  I know that tecshare has had issue with default trust but I don't understand all the history.  I opened this thread before I ended up on the wrong end of a smear attack by quickseller.  But this isn't the place to discuss individual instances of trust abuse, here we're discussing ways to have less drama in meta and a cleaner and more understandable trust system.  Vod, what do you think of the suggestinos in the OP?

Thanks for at least admitting you don't understand the whole story instead of just pretending like pretty much everyone else around here. Thinking does not fuel his endless need for more drama, so he avoids it at all costs (btw Vod you sound like a parrot).

We are here to discuss how to make the trust system better, in order to do that we need to examine its failures. How exactly do we do that without talking about specific instances of those failures?

The trust system should be disabled completely, since it's a terrible indicator of reliability and if you're new here you might think it actually means something and get tricked.

What does this trust mean when people are selling accounts "with Green Trust" on here? It's not linked to anything like a PGP key.

This is definitely the crux of my OP.  So far, wrt mods and others on Default trust, only Salty has given a reply.  He was actually interested in supporting the suggestion to at least tone down the "warning" so that it more accurately reflects what what negative trust means.  I agree that overconfidence in what the trust system is supposed to mean is the main reason behind most of the drama.

How do you know what I sound like, troll?   ;)

Vod, this is totally not helping.  What do you think of the suggestions in the OP?

Tspacepilot, i will quote my answer from the other thread since it matches here too. I will add that your suggestion of changing red to yellow will not really change anything. Red is an alarm and it mostly is because of scams. Everyone can check out what it is about. When it was quickseller neg repping a newbie asking for a loan then you don't need to think automatically that he is a scammer. A yellow text instead red wouldn't change much there.

I think you're missing the point.  The trust system has several wonderful features which aren't even used, such as the ability to select your own network and depth of trust.  The reason they aren't used is because of the existence of default settings and the lack of any clear instructions about what a newbie should do.  For this reason, 99% of the people don't change their trust settings and if you do change your trust settings, it just means that your blinding yourself to the state of affairs as seen by most users.

The idea of the default trust list was supposedly that it would "bootstrap the system" so that people's trust wasn't all zeros at the beginning.  What happened instead was that the few people on default trust became the de-facto scam police.  And this led to the current situation where there's always a handful of people trying to fight their way into that elite clique.

If steps were taken to educate people about how to build their own networks then I'd think we'd see two things:

1) A more natural, heterogenous community where people happily trade with people in their network, and approach others with caution
2) A healthier environment where there wasn't any one person you had to please in order to become an elite, in a more distributed trust network, you'd see many clusters of people instead of the top-down pyrimid style network we currently have.

In my opinion, and from what I've read from theymos and others, it's this latter network that we were supposed to see in the trust system, but bootstrapping it with a central authority alongside the well-known internet phenomenon of mob-mentality has led to a number of avoidable abuses.

@Saltyspitoon, upthread you said that you strongly agreed with some of my ideas here and that you were going to bring them up with Theymos.  Do you have any update for us on that?

I answered in the other thread to not having to repeat myself again. I think it would not work for several reasons. And removing a bad rating on your account would only be cosmetics since most other forum members still would see it when they would have a controversial voter in their list. And they probably would have when many have added him.

See: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1163292.new;topicseen#new